Rail giant faces WW2 court action

An 82-year-old Frenchman stood in a Paris courtroom yesterday to demand damages from France's state-owned rail company, SNCF, for carrying his mother and father to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps.

Kurt Schaechter, who fled Austria to France with his parents in 1939, said the case was not about gaining revenge but showing that "an entire system of state" was behind France's active cooperation in the deportation of 77,000 Jews by train during the second world war.

"I want SNCF to recognise its responsibility, that's all," he said. "I'm asking just 1 euro [68p] in damages. If we don't maintain certain values, we are lost. We cannot remain silent on subjects like these."

The civil case is the first of its kind to come to court since 1994 legislation allowing organisations as well as individuals to be tried for human rights crimes. Lawyers for SNCF argued that the facts were common knowledge and had long been covered by France's statute of limitations.

Bur Mr Schaechter's lawyer, Joseph Roubache, said the 10-year limit should apply from the moment the alleged crime was discovered. He said key documents proving SNCF's role in actively organising the deportations had come to light only in the past decade.

In the early 90s Mr Schaechter himself discovered in the Toulouse national archives a number of SNCF bills for deportation transports that had been submitted directly to the French interior ministry, not to the German authorities as SNCF had always claimed.

Other documents were uncovered in 1996 showing that it was SNCF senior managers who had suggested to the Vichy government organising top-secret convoys.

Mr Schaechter alleges the SNCF infringed the human rights of his parents, Emil and Margaret, when they were carried in appalling conditions to the Sobibor and Auschwitz camps in 1943 and 1944.

"If the SNCF would admit its responsibility, as the French bishops and the Paris police have done, I'd drop the case," he said. "But they won't." A verdict is due on May 14.